Sugar Does More Than Rot Your Teeth

They don't call it "white death" for nothing. If you're looking for reasons to cut back on the amount of sugar you consume every day, how about this: added sugars can contribute to heart disease.

In other words, all th

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at additional sugar in your sodas, your kids' breakfast cereal, in your ketchup and barbecue sauces, and in just about everything we buy nowadays from frozen meatballs to candy, is doing more than just rotting your teeth. According to a study published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association, it may actually contribute to the decrease of beneficial cholesterol, which is needed to help clear out bad cholesterol. The result?

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"Folks with the highest – versus the lowest – intake of refined sugar had higher blood triglycerides (fat) and triple the risk of having a low level of HDL (good) cholesterol," according to dietitian and columnist Leslie Beck, who wrote about the study in yesterday's Globe and Mail.

Key words to remember so far: added sugars and refined sugars. In this instance, added sugars are sweeteners added to foods on top of, or in lieu of, naturally occurring sugars such as fructose. Refined sugars, of course, include cane sugar and beet sugar. But there's more; you knew that.

Look on the back of nearly any convenience food and you'll find sugars of some sort under a wide variety of names: sucrose, dextrose, glucose, and levulose. Look, too, for lactose, maltose, and cellobiose. It doesn't end there: how many sugar-laden foods geared toward children contain natural sugars, such as maple and honey, in addition to the other sugars?

Fortunately, as the JAMA study points out, these are ingredients we can strike from our diets. If your kids won't eat unsweetened cereals, will they eat cereals which they're allowed to sweeten themselves – with your supervision?